Uni-Wissen Teaching English in the Primary School - Optimize your exam preparation Anglistik/Amerikanistik

1 Starting early: A European development

1The classroom as a focus of interest

Teaching and learning a foreign language is a complex process: it is situated in a classroom where many factors influence what children can learn. SCRIVENER (1994: 202), for example, has developed an observation task to make student teachers aware of the many factors that help students learn a foreign language. He mentions the room (i.e. seating, sight-lines, space, light, equipment), the activities (i.e. kinds of activities used, nature of student involvement, balance of students and teacher doing things), the teacher (i.e. his or her personal qualities, rapport, the atmosphere generated by him or her), and the learners (i.e. their motivation, their active involvement). It is therefore very difficult to make general statements about this environment which has had characteristics such as uncertainty, complexity, uniqueness, instability, and value conflict attributed to it (SCHÖN 1983). We therefore need to be aware of the fact that no two classrooms are alike and that what works in one classroom may not necessarily work in another.

Features of the primary EFL classroom

As CAMERON (2001: 1) says, some differences between adult and secondary classrooms are immediately obvious: “[C]hildren are more often enthusiastic and lively as learners. They want to please the teacher […]. They will have a go at an activity even when they don’t quite understand why or how. However, they also lose interest more quickly and are less able to keep themselves motivated on tasks they find difficult. Children […] do not have the same access as older learners to meta-language that teachers can use to explain about grammar or discourse. Children often seem less embarrassed than adults at talking in a new language, and their lack of inhibition seems to help them get a more native-like accent.” Research by EDELENBOS ET AL (2006: 67ff.) confirms this. They show clearly that the benefit of introducing a modern language at the primary school level lies in the positive attitudes and motivation which children develop and sustain. CAMERON concludes her list of primary-specific learner characteristics with a cautious note, saying that generalizations may hide the diversity of the children. Heterogeneity is the constituent feature of primary classrooms: there may be children who are more outgoing than others, and others who prefer to be silent. You find a multitude of individual learners and learning styles as a result of their different personalities, cultural backgrounds, and preferences as well as their social, intellectual, or linguistic development (see also LIGHTBOWN & SPADA, 1999; → ch. 3). Therefore your choice of topics, materials, activities and teaching strategies depends very much on who your learners are. This is why we will introduce you to the idea of classroom action research or practitioner research in the next paragraph, which aims at helping teachers develop the quality of their teaching and their students’ learning in their particular learning-teaching contexts.

Developing the quality of learning in classrooms

Results of findings of empirical studies that have looked into how languages are learned at the primary level (→ ch. 2) can never be directly transferred to improve teaching in a particular classroom, because there are no general solutions for complex practical situations such as the teaching and learning of a foreign language in a classroom. These situations demand specific solutions that may be best developed and tested within a particular classroom by the teacher and his or her learners who are the constituent factors that determine the quality of learning. Furthermore, a simple transfer of research-based ideas is impossible for yet another reason: “If we ask what we know with certainty about language learning, the answer is likely to be disappointingly small […] We are talking here of a complex and inaccessible psychological phenomenon, and can only hope for a concept which has plausibility, not a fact which has certainty” (PRABHU 1989, chs. 1 & 3). We therefore subscribe to an approach to professional development that enables teachers to find out – in collaboration with their learners and their colleagues – if an idea, an activity or an experience that has been reported from elsewhere – has the potential to improve the quality of learning in their particular classrooms. This is best done by doing classroom-based action research projects (see BURNS 2005; DÖRNYEI 2007, ch. 8; LEGUTKE & SCHOCKER-V. DITFURTH in press 2008). There is not enough space to make you familiar with the concrete proceedings of this approach here. In general terms, it is “a process in which teachers examine their own educational practice systematically and carefully, using a range of data collection and analysis techniques” (KAREN JOHNSON, TESOL 2008). We believe that you need to be aware that the quality of learning in any classroom is shaped by the participants’ perceptions and understandings and their definition of the social situation. But let us first turn our attention to what influences primary EFL learning on a ‘macro level’, that is anything ranging from European language policy, institutional affordances or constraints or teacher qualification programs.

2Starting early: A European trend

One of the most remarkable changes in European education in recent years has been the universal spread of early language learning programs throughout Europe since the 1990s (see CHRIST 2003; EDELENBOS ET AL 2006: 13; ENEVER 2005: 179). This trend appears to have been linked in part to the opening of borders across Europe and the enormous increase in economic and cultural exchanges as by-products of globalization. According to EDELENBOS’ ET AL study (2006: 19–20), which is based on data from 30 countries, most of which was retrieved in 2003/2004, the situation in Europe is as follows:

“[A]pproximately 50% of primary pupils learn at least one foreign language […], a second foreign language in primary education is compulsory in four countries (Luxembourg, Estonia, Sweden and Iceland). [… M]ost member states expected that all pupils would have to learn at least one foreign language. All learners in that year were obliged to start in primary school, with the exceptions of Belgium (the Flemish speaking community outside Brussels), the United Kingdom and Bulgaria. Two foreign languages are compulsory in four EU states (Estonia, Luxemburg, Sweden and Iceland). [… As regards the choice of language], the data […] clearly show the dominance of English as a foreign language in primary education.”

Policies and rationales: the Europeanization of starting early

The teaching of English within primary schools is globally increasing but: “Variability is a key characteristic of the practice of ELL. Many of the problems associated with ELL are related to provision factors, such as class-size, amount of continuing professional development, support for teachers, availability […] of appropriate materials, amount of time made available and teachers’ L2 proficiency” (EDELENBOS ET AL 2006: 22). This means that in the classroom there are important differences in the quality of language learning due to differences in the frequency and duration of language classes, in the funding of the programs, in the consistency of teacher education programs, and in quality assessment. “Contextual factors of implementation at school level will finally be what defines the value of a policy” (ENEVER 2005: 180). In Germany, the federal education system has resulted in a variety of different state government programs on the basis of different theoretical assumptions and curricula (see SEKRETARIAT DER STÄNDIGEN KONFERENZ DER KULTUSMINSTER 2005).

It has been criticized that as a result of the hasty introduction of foreign languages in primary schools in some German states, insights from empirical studies have only been considered in part, if at all (see EDELENBOS ET AL 2006: 147 ff.; SCHMELTER 2007: 86; BRUSCH 2000a for a survey of different approaches to teaching languages at primary level). This is also what RÜCK (2004: 22) assumes when he says that views on early language learning are often dominated by “vorwissenschaftliche Ansichten etwa zur ‘optimalen Phase des Grundschulalters’, zur ‘Imitationsfähigkeit von Primarschülern’ oder zum ‘spielerischen Lernen’”. It has also been criticized that the time of exposure provided by schools (in most states two lessons a week) is not enough to achieve satisfactory results (SAUER 2000).

3Starting early: Reasons why

Younger does not necessarily equal better

The commonly shared reasons why early start programs have been implemented during the last years are therefore interesting. These reasons differ considerably from those given when languages were first introduced at primary level in the 1970s. These earlier attempts were based on the assumption...